by Alan Cumyn
“We’d better get home,” said Leonard.
They helped Andy across the floor, then up and out of the window. It was truly a night for miracles, because the farther they got from the house, the better Andy’s leg felt, so that by the time they were on the road again it wasn’t broken anymore. Andy made his brothers swear an oath of secrecy to not tell their parents about the haunted house, because if they found out, the boys would never be allowed out on Halloween again.
Just before they got home, Andy stopped Leonard and said, “What did the Bog Man’s wife say when you asked her how to make a baby?”
Leonard said he wouldn’t tell them unless they handed over all the candies they had left. They argued and shouted but Leonard wouldn’t be moved. So finally they dumped their bags into his and he filled his mouth with candy rockets and chocolate peanuts.
“Come on, a deal’s a deal!” Andy said.
Leonard chewed slowly. He suddenly seemed to be a lot older.
“Please, Leonard!” Andy said finally. “What did she say? How do you make a baby?”
“It’s a secret. She wouldn’t tell me,” Leonard said, wiping his mouth. “’Cause I’m a boy.” And he ran inside the house before his brothers could touch him.
Valentine’s Day
OWEN HAD THE most private and terrible secret. He was in love — with a girl, of all things. Her name was Sylvia.
On the first day of school, when the kids chose the seat that would be theirs for the entire year, Owen watched where Sylvia sat. Then he headed for the opposite corner, as far away as he could get. But as soon as the desk was his he knew he had made a terrible mistake. He sat staring at her, wishing his desk closer. For days and weeks he imagined an airplane suddenly falling out of the sky, rushing at a thousand miles an hour straight into the windows of the classroom. While all the other kids ran for the door he’d flash across and tackle Sylvia under a desk so that the plane crash would just miss the both of them. Everybody else would be killed, so she’d have to marry him.
It was not a nice school. The principal was as tall as a beanpole and bald on top except for some gray curly hairs that came straight out of his ears, and red hairs bursting from his nose. His name was Mr. Schneider. Most of the time the kids never saw him. They only heard how mean he was. Everyone knew that if you were sent to Mr. Schneider, he made you stand by his big black desk in the office and bend over. Then he took out the Strap. If you cried he gave you an extra whack. Mr. Schneider was so old there was pretty well only one thing left in the world that he could do well.
The teachers got their kids so jittery with stories of Mr. Schneider and the Strap that as soon as the teacher left the classroom, somebody would jump up on a desk and yell out, “Don’t do anything, or you’ll get the Strap!”
Then someone else would jump up on a desk and scream, “But you’re already doing something! He’s going to give us all the Strap!” And then nearly everybody would be up on their desks, yelling and fighting, and someone would yell, “Shhhh! Someone’s coming! It’s Mr. Schneider!”
Then they’d all crash down from their desks and sit up straight in their chairs with their hands folded, holding their breath. And the footsteps would go click click click down the hall. If nobody looked in, there would be this terrible moment of silence when everyone knew they should just keep sitting there with their hands folded. But how could they? It was inhuman. First one kid would breathe and then another and before they knew it those kids would be up on their desks again, dancing and screaming.
At recess time they ran screaming from one end of the schoolyard to the other and back again. The girls chased the boys and kissed them if they caught them. The girls were bigger than the boys. There was a white line painted across the schoolyard to keep the girls from chasing the boys, but it didn’t work. The girls took one look at that line and then ran right over it. And the teachers didn’t care. They stayed in the staff room smoking at recess time. You could see the smoke puffing out of the window even though it was closed and the drapes were drawn. Those teachers didn’t want anything to do with the kids at recess. Sometimes they forgot to ring the bell and the girls would chase and kiss boys for hours.
But Sylvia never chased. That was part of what was so impossible about her. Owen saw her once when he was walking back from a hockey game at night with Andy. It was wintertime by then, cold and black, and their footsteps made crunch crunch noises in the packed snow. They carried their hockey sticks and skates over their shoulders and walked silently in single file, cutting through the schoolyard on their way back from the rink.
Owen happened to look up at just the right moment. There was a light on in one of the classrooms where some kids were taking piano lessons. One little girl looked up just as Owen was passing by. She had long pale blonde hair and blonde eyelashes, and skin so soft it felt heavenly just to look at it. Her eyes were blue with light speckles, like the summer sky made into a jewel.
That was Sylvia. She lifted her eyes from the music book and looked directly at him as he walked past the window. It was a second and a half in a very bright light.
There’s a funny thing about windows at night. When the lights are so bright inside, then outside people can see in perfectly. But the inside people only see a black window, with a reflection of themselves. Sylvia never saw Owen, though he didn’t know that until much later, when he’d taken out this memory and examined it from every angle. But that night he felt like he’d pushed his finger into a light socket and given himself an electric shock. He was doomed.
On Valentine’s Day all the kids had heart-shaped cardboard mailboxes taped to their desks. If you wanted to give somebody a Valentine you had to walk up and slip it in. Owen didn’t want anybody to think that he was hopelessly in love with Sylvia, so he made cards for everyone in the class. When it came time to make Sylvia’s card his hand shook with nervousness and it became difficult to breathe.
Owen wasn’t a good cardmaker anyway. He had a hard time coloring inside the lines, and he wasn’t good at spelling. He didn’t know how to spell Sylvia. He spelled Dear and Love and his own name perfectly, but instead of starting Sylvia with an S, he started it with a C because he knew sometimes C could sound like an S and maybe this was one of those times. Then he walked around to everybody’s heart-shaped mailbox and put in the cards.
When he got near Sylvia’s he could barely make his feet move, and his face was a burning tomato. Just as he was putting the card in her box he read her name and noticed that it started with an S instead of a C. But it seemed to him impossible to stop putting the card in since he was there already and his arm had started moving and she was sitting right beside her box and if she turned and looked at him from such a close range he might die instantly. So he shoved it in, then rushed back to his seat and thought about what Sylvia sounded like if it started with a C. If you thought it was a soft C then it would just be Sylvia, the same. But if you thought it was a hard C then it became Kill-via, which might send the wrong message.
He had to get the card back. But how could he just walk up and put his hand in her heart-box and pull it out again? How could he be sure it was the right one? Her box was bulging with cards. She would take them out at three o’clock and read them one by one, then get to the one from Owen and his life would be over.
Owen rose to his feet. All the kids were back at their desks now because it was time for quiet reading. You weren’t supposed to be walking around anymore.
The teacher was writing something on the blackboard, her back turned to the class. She was a lumpy, gray-haired woman named Mrs. Harridan, and she hated children.
Owen stepped toward Sylvia’s desk. It was all the way across the classroom. The other kids started whispering but Owen couldn’t stop. His feet were moving and his brain had stopped thinking. No danger seemed too great. He had to get that card back!
When he got to Sylvia’s mailbox, Sylvia turned to
him and said, “What are you doing?” Those were her first words directly spoken to him, even though he had saved her from countless plane crashes. Mrs. Harridan turned around and Owen thrust his hand into Sylvia’s heart-box. He tried to grab the card near the top, but somehow all of them came bursting out and spilled on the floor. A staple broke on the side of her box as well, and part of the lace trim came off.
“Owen Skye!” Mrs. Harridan yelled. The classroom became completely silent.
Owen didn’t know what he was doing anymore. Every card he looked at had Sylvia spelled correctly. He picked them up by bunches and tried to stuff them back in, but more staples gave way and now the heart-box was in tatters.
All the kids started laughing except for Sylvia, whose face was flaming. She had such delicate skin anyway, and was so quiet. He knew that to have everybody laughing like that was the worst thing imaginable.
As he was floundering with all her cards, Owen tried to say, “I’m sorry,” but the sounds came out more like, “Sworry.”
Mrs. Harridan sent Owen to the principal, Mr. Schneider. He had to walk, by himself, down the hallway past three classrooms, then turn right and go up the stairs. Everyone knew where the principal’s office was but it was like the Bog Man had captured Owen and turned his brain to soup. He went down the hallway and turned right but nothing looked familiar. He’d never been in the hallway when it was completely empty like that. He went past class after class of kids sitting in rows and teachers talking with pointers in their hands.
Finally, when he knew he was lost and would never reach Mr. Schneider’s office, he found it. He stood trembling in front of the big brown wooden door and knocked. Then he waited. His face and ears were still blazing red and everything seemed to be spinning slowly around him.
There was no answer. He knocked again, louder, and heard footsteps coming to the door. Click click click.
It was Mrs. Lime, the principal’s secretary. She had big shoulders and small eyes and wore glasses with a black strap to keep them from falling down.
“Yes?” she said.
“I have… I am… uh… ” Owen said.
“Have you been sent to see Mr. Schneider?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What did you do?”
Owen had to think hard how to say what he’d done in just a few words. Finally he said, “I made a spelling mistake.”
Mrs. Lime nodded, then told him to sit in one of the black chairs outside the door of Mr. Schneider’s real office, which was inside the secretary’s office. Owen sat with his back straight and his feet almost reaching the floor. For the first time he noticed that he was clutching a Valentine’s card that had been in Sylvia’s heart-box before he destroyed it. It wasn’t his card, though. It was from Michael Baylor, and it said, “I loev you.”
Owen read it over and over. So Michael Baylor was in love with her too! It was terrible to think about. When that plane came tumbling out of the sky there would be two of them rushing over to save Sylvia. And Michael Baylor sat a lot closer, so what was the point? Owen would probably arrive just in time to be hit by the landing gear.
Mr. Schneider came out of his office. He was even taller than usual, and his gray suit smelled of old cigarettes. He looked down from the clouds at Owen and said, “What is your name?”
Owen stood up, cleared his throat and said, “Michael Baylor.”
“Well, now, Michael Baylor. What have you done?”
Owen told him the whole story. He told him how he was in love with Sylvia but had made a spelling mistake on her card and so went over to try to correct it even though he should have been sitting in his seat since it was quiet reading time. He didn’t leave out any details. In fact, being Michael Baylor seemed to give him a reckless kind of courage. He finished up by saying, “You can give me the Strap if you like. I deserve it!”
Mr. Schneider scratched the hair in his ears and his nose. Then he cleared his throat. His face was grim.
But before he could speak, Mrs. Lime said from her desk, “It’s Valentine’s Day, sir.” And Mr. Schneider said that he must promise not to make any kind of commotion again and Owen said no, sir, he wouldn’t. Then Mr. Schneider sent him back to the classroom.
Owen walked in with his shoulders back and his head up. He pretended to sit down gently so all the kids would think he’d had the Strap. There were whispers up and down the rows but Owen looked unconcerned. He opened his notebook and wrote line after line — LOVE LOVE LOVE — getting the V and the E in the right order, just like Michael Baylor couldn’t. He did not look at Sylvia and Sylvia did not look at him, and when he got home he threw Michael Baylor’s card in the garbage and didn’t tell anyone about it.
Doom Monkey the Unpredictable
ONE DAY THAT WINTER Uncle Lorne came to stay. He was Horace’s unmarried brother. Margaret always used to say to Horace, “Look what would have happened to you if you hadn’t married me!”
Uncle Lorne was as tall as the house practically and just barely skin and bones, because he’d been cooking for himself so long. He had a hard time finding clothes that fit, and didn’t seem to care much anyway. His feet were huge, and his pants usually stopped several inches above his ankles. His shirt sleeves were often ripped and his ties always showed old dinner stains.
He was very shy, even with the kids. He’d be reading the newspaper in the kitchen after work, and when one of the boys came roaring around the corner, chasing Doom Monkey the Unpredictable, Uncle Lorne would rise up suddenly as if he’d been caught in the bathroom with his pants around his ankles. If someone said, “Hi, Uncle Lorne!” he’d turn away and go back to the little cot in the basement that Horace had set up for him. Margaret hated that cot and often asked Uncle Lorne to use the pull-out couch in the living room. But he preferred to stay down in the gloom despite the possibility of encountering the Bog Man. He rigged up a light and built stairs to the kitchen, put down some plywood on the floor, and said it felt like home.
No one knew when Doom Monkey the Unpredictable was going to appear. Right in the middle of almost anything there might be a sudden cry: “This is a job for Doom Monkey!” Then there would be a race into the bedroom to get Doom Monkey’s Atrocious Hat. It was made of brown velvet with lots of stuffing. Whoever put it on became Doom Monkey the Unpredictable, the trickiest fighter in the Western Hemisphere.
One time Doom Monkey was desperately needed to stop an invasion of space lizards. Andy grabbed the Atrocious Hat first, so Owen and Leonard were lizards. They screamed at the top of their lungs and scampered around the house. Just as Andy was corralling them, he lost the Atrocious Hat and Owen became Doom Monkey.
At this point the lizards took over and Doom Monkey’s mission was to somehow survive. He raced into the closet in the attic bedroom and brought down an avalanche of clothes on top of the pursuing lizards. Then he sped downstairs and across the living room and ducked behind the old green sofa. The lizards thought he was in the kitchen. He slipped out the front door, ran in his shoes through the snow to the coal chute and into the basement, which wasn’t as scary as it used to be since Uncle Lorne had fixed it up a bit.
Owen crept under Uncle Lorne’s cot.
There wasn’t as much room there as Owen had thought there would be. The space was filled with magazines — thick, glossy ones full of pictures of old cars. There were gleaming Fords and Hudsons and little French racing cars that looked like torpedoes on wheels. Almost all the cars had beautiful women lying on top of them, or bending over to rub the headlights, or looking in the mirrors to check their lipstick. Owen had never seen so many pictures of beautiful women. The Atrocious Hat fell off him while he was huddled under the cot looking. It was hard to see in the shadows.
He was so engrossed in the pictures that he forgot about everything.
Suddenly the new basement light went on. Owen looked over and saw a huge pair of boots beside the cot. T
hen he screamed and scrambled out. He slipped on the magazines, ripping some of the pages. He ran straight into the little bedside bench and knocked over the water dish that held Uncle Lorne’s spare set of false teeth.
“Hey!” Uncle Lorne said, and straightened up to grab for him, but bonked his head on a low beam and fell over.
Just then Andy and Leonard came down the stairs to the scene of disaster. The kids didn’t know what to do with Uncle Lorne. He was knocked out, and the beam had left a big square bruise on his forehead. And he was too big to lift or even drag back to the cot. Andy poured the remaining false tooth water over Lorne’s face.
That made Uncle Lorne sit up, sudden as a mummy, and the boys ran away. Lorne never said anything about it, and even the bruise on his forehead faded after awhile.
In secret, talking in low voices so that the boys had to be quiet to hear, Margaret and Horace would discuss what to do with Uncle Lorne. Horace said that his brother had always been shy and would probably be happy to live in the basement for the rest of his life. But Margaret thought that Lorne might be able to marry Mrs. Foster from the farm down the way and across the river.
Mrs. Foster was a widow with two little girls, Eleanor and Sadie. Owen and his brothers would have nothing to do with them. The girls came over carrying dolls who drank tea. And Eleanor, the eldest, was a Junior Scientist who didn’t believe in Superheroes. Mrs. Foster would visit with Margaret and the two girls would play by themselves in the front room while the boys tore around the house being Doom Monkey.
Mrs. Foster had dusty hair and tired eyes, and didn’t look at all beautiful to Owen. But Owen noticed that Uncle Lorne couldn’t sit in the same room with her. His face got twitchy and flushed, and he started leaning forward in his seat and rubbing his legs over and over without realizing what he was doing. If she said anything to him he started in his chair and said, “Hahh!” suddenly, as if he’d been smacked. Then he’d get up and say something like, “Just got to… you know,” and retreat to his basement.